Sociology of Environmental Activism and Citizenship: Collective Action in the Anthropocene
Sociology of Environmental Activism and Citizenship: Collective Action in the Anthropocene
Tuesday, 8 July 2025: 09:00-10:45
Location: SJES031 (Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences (JES))
RC24 Environment and Society (host committee) Language: English
Environmental citizenship is now added to the multiple levels and horizons of individual and collective citizenships around the globe. The growing sociological interest in environmental and climate justice, intensified with increasing public awareness of the climate crisis, calls for attention towards environmental/climate citizenship on a local, regional and global scale. Following Huttunen et al. (2020), this call for papers uses the term environmental citizenship as encompassing climate, green, sustainable, and ecological citizenship and invites environmental sociologists from a wide range of methodological and theoretical backgrounds to discuss challenges, opportunities and implications of environmental citizenship in the complex ecological, socioeconomic, and geopolitical dynamics of the anthropocene. If the concept of citizenship makes possible a balance between the “shared process of ruling and of being ruled” (Janowitz, 1980), then what are the implications and applications of environmental citizenship in the current socio-political atmosphere and how do they serve democratic climate governance? How do the exercises of environmental citizenship, including youth climate activism, degrowth movements, civil society engagements in environmental decision making, eco-friendly lifestyle advocacy, green initiatives, and demanding sustainable city-making are changing the face of our societies? How do the decolonial readings of environmental histories impact current practices of environmental social movements in settler colonial geographies? What are the radical, critical, or normalized civil society responses to the threat of global warming and what is the role of formal and informal sustainable education channels? These are some of the questions that this session addresses on the topic of environmental citizenship and activism.
Session Organizers:
Oral Presentations
Distributed Papers